Extermination Camps

Nazi Extermination Camps

Anti-Semitism reached to extreme levels beginning in 1939, when Polish Jews were regularly rounded up and shot by members of the SS. Though some of these SS men saw the arbitrary killing of Jews as a sport, many had to be lubricated with large quantities of alcohol before committing these atrocious acts. Mental trauma was not uncommon amongst those men who were ordered to murder Jews. The establishment of extermination camps therefore became the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question", as well as a way to alleviate the mental trauma that grappled the minds of Nazi soldiers. The following essay will examine various primary and secondary sources to better illuminate the creation, evolution, practices and perpetrators of the extermination camps wherein the horrors of the Holocaust were conducted.

Pridham Noakes maintains that the creation of extermination camps began for two important reasons, the first already being mentioned as a way of soothing the psychological stress imposed upon Nazi soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen ordered to kill Jews with firearms. Fischer discusses the mental consequences which overcame soldiers of the Einsatzgruppen as a result of these brutal murders: "The menÐ'...were physically and psychologically drained. Some sought refuge in alcohol, some became physically ill, a few committed suicide." The second reason for the creation of the extermination camps was to better conceal "subhuman" extermination from public (and foreign) view while accelerating the process of mass genocide.

The first extermination camp was located in Chelmno, Poland, where gas vans were used to kill the camps' victims. Gas vans had been introduced in Poland in 1939, Noakes maintains, and had initially been used to murder Russian POWs. The gassing of Polish Jews began in 1941 after the Nazis had forcefully gathered the majority of them into ghettoes around Lodz and Warthegau. The process was of crude design: Jews (and other Ð''subhuman' subjects) were rounded up and told they were to be sent to a labor camp. Before this, however, they were to strip naked and bathe. After stripping, the victims were herded and locked into a gas van. The Ð''driver' started the engine, and the exhaust from the vehicle flooded into the van, killing the victims inside. According to Noakes, "a recent estimate has given a total figure of 215,000 killed in Chelmno." After the creation of the more efficient gas chambers of later created extermination camps, the use of gas vans became less favored by SS officials, and Chelmno closed in 1943.

After the gas vans of Chelmno were phased out, SS officials began devising new methods of extermination that would kill more Jews at an accelerated rate. Fischer notes that the Nazis "decided that execution by poison gas in remote annihilation camps was the most efficient and Ð''humane' method of murdering the Jews." Aktion Reinhard (named after Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated in Czechoslovakia) was the plan aimed to exterminate Polish Jews living within General Government to the East. Because the Jewish population here was high (2.3 million), three major death camps equipped with large gas chambers were established. Jews who were considered unfit for work (including many women and children) were extracted from labor camps to be exterminated. Belzec, located on the southwest border of former Poland, was the first extermination center initially built to kill off Jews from the Galicia and Lublin regions in order to make room for German Jews in the labor camps. Noakes interestingly notes that Belzec was "an experimental solution to a regional problem rather than the start of a Europe-wide extermination programme." In other words, Belzec was designed initially to kill the Jews in the East, while the decision to murder the entirety of Europe's Jewish population had not yet been realized. According to Noakes, diesel exhaust from a tank was pumped into the chambers in order to kill its victims. The Belzec camp was overseen by Christian Wirth and SS Gruppenfuhrer Globocnek. Belzec was closed down in December 1942, but not before 390,000 Jews met their demise to the horrific gassings. The other two camps were located at Sobibor (a small town on the eastern Polish border north of Belzec), and Treblinka (northwest of Sobibor). The Treblinka camp, capable of fitting over 4,000 persons into its massive chambers, murdered between 900,000 and 1.2 million Jews. Gassings were finally halted in August 1943 as Auschwitz and Zyklon-B became more effective in carrying out Nazi atrocities. The Sobibor extermination camp ended its gassings a few months later. Many Jewish uprisings occurred at these two camps, leading to the death of one prominent SS guard Max Bialas of Treblinka. Ukrainian

guards were ordered by Nazis to open fire upon resisting Jews, and the reprisal for conspiratorial action was always a quick death. The idea therefore many have of Jews marching to their death is a major misperception. However, the efficiency of these camps was astounding, and only one sole Jewish survivor of Treblinka has been accounted for.

Another major aim of Aktion Reinhard, Noakes asserts, was to clear the ghettoes in Poland by exterminating Jews in death camps. In charge of this process were Globocnek and Wirth. Most of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto (310,322) were killed at Treblinka. Though the long-term vision of SS leader Himmler was to eventually exterminate the entirety of the Polish Jewry, many Nazi party members who oversaw Jewish labor camps expressed their concern over this prospect because they felt total depletion of the Jews would cause a major labor shortage which would adversely affect armament production. But through many primary source speeches and letters delivered by Himmler, Noakes is able to convey the SS leader's adamant devotion to this vision and his ambivalence toward these concerns. In one of the letters, Himmler states: "I will not halt the evacuations of the roughly 300,000 Jews remaining in the General Government but rather continue them with the greatest speed."

Aktion Reinhard came to an end during November of 1943 after successfully depleting the great majority of Eastern Jews residing within the Nazis' General Government in the three major death camps. The Jews who remained in the labor camps after their closures were rounded up and shot. Not only were the Nazis successful in carrying out their morbid task of mass extermination, but the material possessions they accrued from their victims were immense. As Noakes points out, "The Ð''Reinhard Action' was not only a programme of mass murder on a gigantic scale